


Gonna Give Me A Heart Attack

by MickyRC



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anathema Device Ships Aziraphale/Crowley, Anathema is a damn good friend, Crowley & Anathema Device Friendship, Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Every Character in This is an Idiot and That Includes the Author, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), Light Angst, M/M, Minor Anathema Device/Newton Pulsifer, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Quite extraordinary amounts of alcohol, Worried Aziraphale (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:29:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22534024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MickyRC/pseuds/MickyRC
Summary: Aziraphale is pretty sure Crowley's okay.  He's been acting strange, but he'd have said something if he wasn't, right?Crowley is most definitely sure that he is very much not okay.  Somehow, he's got a bunch of humans convinced he's married to the guy he calls angel.It doesn't help that he'd really, really like to be.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 32
Kudos: 163
Collections: Good Omens Holiday Swap 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lurlur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lurlur/gifts).



> Well, it's definitely late, but here's my pinch hit for Lurlur for the holiday swap! I saw the words fake relationship. I took them and ran someplace... strange.
> 
> I threw this at, like, six people to beta at various stages, so I'm sorry if I miss anybody but thank you Jace, Stu, Tarek, and Kate for helping me get this off the ground!

Aziraphale loved humanity. That was rather the point of him, as an angel, but still. He did, really and truly, love humans. They were creative, and intelligent, and so wonderfully imaginative.

They were also, objectively speaking,  _ horrible _ for his blood pressure.

Not that he had to have blood pressure in the first place, but he thought it made for a fitting image.

After a full day of dissuading customers, miracling passerbys’ days a touch better, and reshuffling the books for optimal confusion, he was desperately looking forward to an easy night in. A mug of cocoa, an Agatha Christie novel he’d read six times, and possibly, if the stars were in his favor, a late night call from a certain demon.

Ten months since the End Times failed to come on time, and things were good. Things were lovely, things were fine. It was all grand, wonderful, absolutely… tickety-boo.

Alright,  _ perhaps _ , if he were being honest, he would like it if he and Crowley spent more time together. And he supposed it was  _ possible _ that he had hoped for their relationship to take a turn after everything settled down.

But then Crowley had slept through most of the autumn, citing exhaustion and a need to “not be on the plane of existence where  _ eleven year olds _ were better at stopping armageddon than us, angel, I can’t deal with that right now.” And Aziraphale had been fine with that, had given him his blessing, metaphorically, to go and sleep as long as he needed. The shop needed inventory and reshelving after Adam’s attempt at resurrecting it, and it wasn’t like anything much would happen in the meantime, right, dear boy? They would be back to normal right after Crowley’s nap, and no harm done.

He pulled his mug down from the shelf and snapped the hot plate on with a sigh. No sense in wishing for something that wouldn’t happen, was there? At least they still had normal. Normal was a hell of a lot better than nothing.

He was a good ways into the book and a better ways into the cocoa when the phone finally rang, and he couldn’t have stopped his happy little dance if he’d tried. Crowley had been out of town all week, and Aziraphale, quite simply, missed him. His phone didn’t have caller id, since it was, in fact, from the ‘40s, but it wouldn’t have been necessary anyway. The phone knew better than to ring for anyone but Crowley. “Angel!”

“Hello, dear!” Aziraphale replied, grinning like a fool for no one to see, but his joy was cut short when he heard Crowley sputter and choke on the other end of the line. “Are—Crowley are you quite alright?”

“Uh… fine,” he wheezed.

“Are you sure? You sound—”

“Yeah,” he said too quickly. “All good, everything’s good.” He coughed again, and Aziraphale barely resisted the urge to keep questioning him. “So, uh. So how was your day?”

“Oh, it was simply  _ awful _ ,” Aziraphale answered, happy to be back in their normal rhythm. “You wouldn’t  _ believe _ how many customers—”

“Good, good I’m glad.”

Aziraphale squinted. “Is… what?”

“And how ‘bout the garden, how’s it doing without me?” Crowley sounded oddly rushed. And weirdly static, like he was reading from a script.

“You—do you mean your plants?” Was he speaking in code? “I haven’t been yet, I’m going to check on them tomorrow.”

“They’re not getting any ideas, then?”

Aziraphale stared at the phone. “Crowley, are you even listening to me?”

“Great, swee _aaahh ngk—angel._ Angel, uh. I’ll be home—er—day after tomorrow.”

Aziraphale felt a weight settle in his gut. Something was definitely up. “Crowley.” He was making a deliberate effort to keep his voice steady. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m almost done out here. ‘S gone well.”

Well that  _ sounded _ like a yes. But if it was, why wouldn’t he just say it? Unless—

A little bit of panic grabbed at Aziraphale’s heart. Crowley hadn’t responded properly to  _ anything _ he’d said, the entire call. What if—what if he couldn’t? He could hear other people around, chattering voices in the background of the call. What if Crowley was in danger? What if he needed help, but couldn’t say it aloud?

“Wait,” he said quickly. Aziraphale was a planner, thinking on his feet was horribly stressful, but he had to come up with something. “Crowley, if—dear, if you need help, say, er…” Words,  _ words _ , what even were words? “Balderdash!”  _ What? _ “Say balderdash, if, erm, if you’re in danger.”

There was a pause. He heard Crowley take a breath, and then he made Aziraphale’s heart stop. “I, uh. I miss you.”

He couldn’t move. He barely heard the rest of the call, the “see you soon,” the “call you tomorrow,” the “goodnight, angel.” He only came back to himself when the receiver clicked with the end of the call.

“I miss you,” he murmured to himself, collapsing back into his armchair. “I miss you, what—urgh,  _ Crowley. _ ”

Was that—did he mean it?  _ How _ did he mean it, was it like the way Aziraphale missed him, like an ache, like a lost treasure? Or was it part of the act? Because there  _ was _ an act, clearly, it was just a matter of  _ why _ .

He hadn’t said the word. Hadn’t taken the out Aziraphale gave him, that had to mean he was fine, right? Maybe he’d call back. Maybe Anathema had put him up to it on a dare, maybe he was just drunk out of his head and come tomorrow he wouldn’t remember a thing.

He hadn’t said the word. Aziraphale had to trust him, trust that he knew what he was doing and that he was alright. He picked up his book, though at this point he couldn't have said whether it was a Miss Marple or a Poirot.

He shook his neck out, and made himself focus on the page in front of him. Crowley was fine. He hadn’t said “balderdash,” which meant he was alright. Frankly, if he  _ ever _ heard the word “balderdash” come out of the demon’s mouth, he would be concerned, he couldn’t have picked a more out of character word. Aziraphale cracked a smile at the thought, though he knew it was a weak one.

Heaven help him, he was a bit of a worrier at heart. And as much as he loved him (and he really  _ did _ love him), Crowley was not especially good for Aziraphale’s blood pressure.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no explanation. I also have no promise on when the next chapter will be out. Everybody in this fic is an idiot, and that includes me.

Crowley collapsed back on the hotel room bed and wondered whether demons could feasibly blame misfortune on a sinful past life. The speckle painted ceiling wavered above him as the bed bounced and jiggled. His phone dug into his hip bone, the tight denim of his jeans nudging it uncomfortably into his skin, and he decided that, no, it really wasn’t fair to blame this on a past life. This was, in its entirety, his own damn fault.

He’d thought he was being so clever, heading out of town to keep his increasingly uncontrollable pining under wraps. If Aziraphale wasn’t there, he couldn’t spend all evening staring at him, could he? Couldn’t spend all night yearning to so much as brush their pinkies together from all the way across the sofa. Couldn’t spend the next morning curled up in his own bed alone trying and failing not to cry.

He should’ve known, really. Drinking never went well around humans. It was how he and Aziraphale’s friendship had first started, as drinking buddies, because there was something so unbearably  _ lonely _ about yammering on about your life to someone whose grandparents hadn’t been born when your stories first happened. But it turned out West Sussex was damn boring at night if you didn’t need sleep and didn’t have anybody to chat with, so to the pub he had gone. Drunk Crowley’s rambling turned, predictably, to the singular love of his very long life, and Drunk Crowley’s new friends had, predictably, completely misunderstood the situation. Which meant Terribly, Horribly Sober Crowley was left surrounded by humans who thought that not only did the love of his life love him back, but that they were together.  _ Together  _ together.

Sober Crowley had scrambled to fix it. Sober Crowley had come up with a backstory, and accomplices to back him, and several backup plans. Sober Crowley had it all figured out, so he wouldn’t have to awkwardly backpedal in front of his new human drinking buddies, and, more importantly, so Aziraphale would never, ever find out about this. It was foolproof.

And then Drunk Crowley’s stupid dangly fingers hit “Aziraphale” instead of “Anathema” when he went to back up his story by calling his “partner.” The partner he was supposedly married to. The partner he didn’t and never would actually have.

Drunk Crowley was an idiot, and now Crowley, sober, inebriated, or otherwise, was thoroughly fucked.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and Crowley groaned and turned on his side in an attempt to smother it against the bed. It would be Aziraphale again. Aziraphale calling to ask what the devil he was playing at. Aziraphale calling to laugh at him for even pretending. Aziraphale calling to say it was over, and he never wanted to catch so much as a glimpse of him ever again. Crowley grabbed a pillow and reeled it in to hold tight against his chest. It was far too squishy to be comforting. His phone finally stopped vibrating, only to start up again, and somehow it sounded more insistent and put out than before.

Fully planning to turn the blasted thing off and chuck it across the room, Crowley yanked the phone out of his pocket, but froze when he saw the name on the screen.

Anathema.

Shit.

He held the buzzing phone for a moment, tossed it between his hands like a hot potato, like a bomb waiting to go off. But it was gonna be in one of his hands no matter what he tried to do, so it was probably better to get the explosion over and done with before the anxiety stopped slapping him across the face and decided to go for a more vulnerable spot.

“Crowley?” Anathema sounded far too alert for half two in the morning. Then again, it was a little hard to tell behind the wall of disbelief in her voice. “What the hell did you  _ do?” _

_ “Fuck.”  _ Crowley fell back on the bed with a groan. 

There was a moment of silence on the line. Crowley took it as a chance to bid farewell to his past life. Finally, Anathema let out a loud breath and settled in. “Okay, first off. Are you sober?”

_ “Very.” _

“Hmph. Are you still in the Downs?”

“Thank fuck, yes.”

“Hotel?”

“Hotel.”

“Good.” She paused again, and Crowley got ready to be told flat out that he had ruined everything he’d ever had, to be let down gently now so when Aziraphale did it later it wouldn’t be as far a drop.

Instead, he got a whoop of laughter and some very unsympathetic cackling. “You  _ idiot,” _ Anathema wheezed, leaving Crowley to gape open mouthed at his phone in shock. “You  _ dumbass, I can’t believe you!” _

Crowley sat up so fast he nearly flung himself into the opposite wall. “How do you know?” he demanded.

“What did you actually  _ do?” _

_ “How the fuck do you know!” _

“He  _ called _ me!” She was still giggling. Every few words she had to pause to let the laughter out, and Crowley thought if he wasn’t so confused he might have been crying. “Called me, middle of the night, didn’t even apologize for waking me up. Whatever you did, you scared the bejeezus out of him.”

Suddenly the crying didn’t seem so far away. “What did he say?” Crowley asked very quietly.

“Not much. He was all rambly, kept doing that thing where he changes the subject but then jumps back and keeps doing that till you don’t know where you are, y’know?” Crowley couldn’t help but grumble that that  _ never _ happened to him, that he could  _ always _ keep up with Aziraphale even at his most rambly, but he kept it in his head. “Said ‘balderdash’ kind of a lot. I didn’t know that was a word people actually used. But he sounded worried. I think he was trying to ask about you, under the tangents and digressions. So my question stands: what. The actual fuck. Did you do?”

Crowley wanted very much in that moment to curl up and not move for a long time. He could just drop the phone on the floor, he reasoned. Let it run out of battery and leave him to lick his wounds in peace. It wasn’t a bad hotel room, he reasoned. He could sulk here for a decade or two before it got too uncomfortable.

But some blasted sensible portion of him knew that wouldn’t actually make him feel any better. Not that there seemed much hope of that anyway, given he’d likely fucked up his relationship with Aziraphale to the point of no return, but if there was any chance of repairing any of it, it almost certainly lay with Anathema.

Best not to piss off the witch with several files of incriminating girl’s-night-in photos and no qualms about blackmail, was really what it came down to.

“I called him,” Crowley finally bit out. “Tonight. At the pub. I meant to call you, like we planned, ‘cause the one guy Aaron wanted to see a photo and when I didn’t have one Really Loud Paul started making jokes so I was gonna call you and do the script thing we made to prove I’m married and  _ why _ did we decide we needed to do that?”

There was only a damning silence from Anathema.

“Yeah, no, drunk me is never allowed to call you for advice ever again, that was absolutely unnecessary and  _ now _ look at this, I’m  _ fucked, _ I’ve ruined everything I fucked it all up and now—”

“Whoa, wait, slow down slow down slow down. Breathe for a sec. You’re not fucked.”

A horrible laugh burst out of Crowley’s chest. “I said—Anathema, I told him I missed him.” He had to whisper the last bit. If he had to hear himself say it he was going to start crying and not be able to stop until the next Apocalypse came and went. He couldn’t bear it.

Anathema was quiet, presumably taking in the magnitude of Crowley’s confession. He imagined her stopping in her tracks as she paced the kitchen with her phone, pictured her having to sit down, hand pressed to her heart as she came to grips with how hopeless this was. Wondered if he’s have to comfort  _ her,  _ once she’d processed it.

“But… you do miss him.”

Crowley stared. “Pardon?”

“You do miss him. You’ve been calling me nonstop all week whining about missing him.”

“That’s—” Crowley shot upright and gaped.  _ “That’s not the point!” _

“It very much is, but okay.”

“No, no Anathema, you don’t get it.”

“Correct.”

“It’s been  _ six thousand years, _ I know how this works by now. I can’t just  _ say _ something like that, that’s, that’s… that ruins everything! I can’t rock the boat or he… or it’ll all fall apart.”

He heard Anathema sigh. “Are you telling me you’ve never, not once, made a move to change your relationship? Not a single one?”

“That’s not what I said. I gotta be careful. There’s rules, there’s a system we have to follow, it’s the only way this works. And I just sped right through all of ‘em. I ruined everything.”

There was another long pause. Crowley’s head dropped, pulling him down to hunch over his knees. “I can’t lose him, Anathema,” he murmured into his thighs. “I can’t. I feel sick, I can’t believe I…  _ fuck, _ I fucked up so bad. He’s gonna hate me. He’ll never want to see me again.”

He stared at the mud colored carpet under his shoes. He really could just hole up here for a century or two. Chuck his phone out the window and hide under the covers for a few years. He’d miss Anathema, but maybe she’d come visit him sometimes. Let him know what humanity was up to. Give him updates about her and Newt. Keep him up to date on what he was missing out on.

Anathema took a heavy breath, and Crowley prepared himself for her judgement. She would probably have a plan, and it would probably be decent, even if she did have a love of overcomplicating things. The best thing he could do right now was listen to her.

“God, you’re both so stupid.”

“What?”

“Right, game plan, here’s what we’re gonna do. You stay there, mope and sulk a bit, stay out of trouble. I’ll call Aziraphale and make your excuses.”

“You…” Crowley took a deep breath, trying and failing to stop the queasiness. “You won’t tell him, right?”

“I promise, on my honor, I won’t tell Aziraphale you’re hopelessly in love with him. As much as I think it’s not helping.”

All the air seemed to rush out of Crowley all at once. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“Of course,” Anathema said, gentler than she had been. “And call me again if you get panicky, yeah?”

“Mhm. What, ah... what  _ are _ you gonna tell him?”

Anathema snorted a laugh. “That you were drunk off your ass.”

“I  _ was _ drunk off my ass.” Crowley dropped backwards again, bouncing with the cheap hotel mattress and feeling a tiny smile shade his lips. Thank someone for Anathema. Aziraphale would never stop being the most important person in his life, but he couldn’t deny that having someone else, having someone else to go to and rely on, was damn nice. Probably healthier, too, if he were being honest with himself.

“All lies are better with a hint of truth,” Anathema was declaring, and Crowley couldn’t help laughing a little. “You gonna be okay?”

Crowley considered. “Think so,” he decided. Anathema wouldn’t make him wait long. He could distract himself for a few hours until he heard his fate. Could make a nuisance of himself, confuse room service, cause a few noise complaints. There was probably something dumb to watch on the TV. He’d manage.

Anathema hung up, promising to call him again as soon as she’d spoken to Aziraphale, and Crowley went back to staring at the poorly painted ceiling above him. This was going to be awful, however it went down, he was sure of it. The anxiety alone might be enough to discorporate him if he let himself sit in it and overthink. But somehow, inexplicably, he’d found himself with somebody to pull him out of it. He wasn’t sure what he’d done in some past life to deserve a friend in Anathema. He decided not to question it. He wasn’t a complete idiot; he knew when to count his blessings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello I'm gonna wax vaguely poetic real fast. this has nothing to do with anything it's really just for me, don't worry about it too much.
> 
> it's been 4 months since the first chapter of this went up. even if the world as a whole wasn't a _completely_ different place to what it was then, that gap was starting to make me think. it's been _such_ a year, but these four months have been huge, and I feel like I need to mark it just a little.
> 
> in the time between posting the first and second chapters of this trainwreck, outside of, ya know, _everything,_ I've changed a lot of things in my life. I have changed my major, finished the hardest semester of my life, gotten a kitten I would happily die for, made friends (??? how? I'm still confused), written a portfolio for grad school, started a fandom event, and participated in a few more. I jumped the path, realized there was a better way to go, and somehow seem to have reached the other road without losing much traction. who the fuck knows what's gonna go down next year. but four months, I mean, fuck. and somehow, without any active push from anything, I'm back here, with this fic. I'll be honest, I was shocked when I reread the first chapter that it still felt like my writing, given how much I've changed. that's the weird thing with voice, I guess, even as it changes, there's some things you're always gonna just love doing with words and they'll just keep cropping up. I dunno. I'm starting to veer existential here, which is my cue to stop and get this darn thing tagged, so. anyway. there's your rambles from micha for the next few months.
> 
> anyway. if that hasn't put you off completely, which, fair, honestly, I'm on tumblr [over here.](https://one-with-the-floor.tumblr.com/) I can tell you this is Not the usual over there, I've just been thinking about this for a while and didn't feel like letting it drift vaguely into the ether this time.


	3. Chapter 3

Aziraphale was fretting.

This wasn’t an uncommon state for the angel, truth be told, but it had been a while since he’d fretted quite so hard. Several months, in fact.

In the hours since getting Crowley’s concerning call the night before, Aziraphale had gone through six cups of cocoa, four miraculously reattached waistcoat buttons, and thirty-seven rounds of pacing the bookshop. He couldn’t get it out of his head. Crowley had sounded so strange, and, now that Aziraphale had analyzed the call in depth multiple times, almost panicked. The realization of which, of course, sent  _ Aziraphale _ into a panic.

He kept telling himself to calm down. That Crowley was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, and even more capable of contacting Aziraphale if he needed assistance. He was fine.

“But what if he’s not?” Aziraphale agonized. The spider plant he was clinging to shivered in sympathy.

Crowley’s house plants loved when Aziraphale came to visit. On top of cooing over them and being more generous with the mister than their owner usually was, Aziraphale liked to chatter. Whenever he came by, he would give them a full update of what had happened since the last time he’d seen them, complete with all his problems and complaints.

The plants were horrible gossips. Aziraphale did absolutely nothing to discourage them.

Except on one subject. The plants were banned, on pain of shredder, from discussing Aziraphale’s affection for Crowley. He needed somewhere to unload all that baggage. And while his weekly visits with Madame Tracy were perfect for getting most of his woes off of his chest, he didn’t trust her an inch not to spill the metaphorical beans or, far worse, try to play matchmaker. So Aziraphale kept his crush to himself, and, on the rare occasion Crowley asked him to come by and water the plants for him, the spider plants.

“Oh, dear,” he fretted. As if being secretly in love with his best friend weren’t enough, now he had to go and scare Aziraphale like this. “I couldn’t stand it if something happened to him…  _ don’t _ tell him I said that.” He whirled around to point at a guilty looking succulent. He’d had a few close calls with that one before.

“You can’t tell him about this. You can’t tell  _ anyone _ about this, it’d ruin everything if he found out.” Aziraphale’s shoulders slumped. “I probably shouldn’t even be telling  _ you, _ my dears, truth be told. Heaven knows walls have ears.”

_ Ducks have ears, _ a little voice in his head piped up, the one that liked to remind him from time to time just how gone he was on Crowley.

Aziraphale sighed and ran a hand down his face. He really was hopelessly head over heels, wasn’t he? Storing away every little memory in the hopes it would tide him over until the moment his love was finally requited. Which obviously wouldn’t be happening at all, at this point.

And yet the treacherous voice in his head insisted on playing Crowley’s “I miss you” on repeat. Just to spite him, Aziraphale was sure.

“I just—oh, goodness, I’m just  _ worried _ about him, is all,” Aziraphale fretted, wringing his hands. “He sounded so strange on the telephone, and he hasn’t called since, and… oh, he’d laugh at me if he knew.”

All the plants in the room shivered in sympathy. A palm frond dangling above him dropped down to gently pat his head, making Aziraphale smile. “Thank you, dear.” He gave the palm a pet and carefully checked its soil, adding perhaps a touch more water than necessary. He always thought Crowley was a bit stingy with his plants. Crowley always said  _ he _ spoiled them. But he still asked Aziraphale to come and take care of them, whenever he had to go out of town.

“He can’t really be in any danger, can he?” Aziraphale asked a little philodendron as he watered it. “The man’s a demon, for Heaven’s sake! And he’s been up here for ages. I doubt there’s a human alive could catch him off guard.” The philodendron did not respond. It was a new addition to Crowley’s collection, and still a quiet little thing. The other plants’ tendency to gossip hadn’t yet rubbed off on it.

Aziraphale watched as the plant’s heart-shaped leaves twitched, shaking themselves out. He couldn’t help picturing Crowley picking this plant out, poking through all the pots and trays at the nursery and finding his eye caught on this one. He’d probably sneered at it at first, he always did; but in the end, Crowley had picked it. Had picked the plant with leaves shaped like a human’s imagination of a heart.

Or maybe he’d just grabbed the greenest plant in the place, and Aziraphale was so far gone he’d started projecting. That was more likely, really.

He gave the little philodendron a last pat, and turned toward the plants on the other wall. It was no good dreaming about what wasn’t, and no good imagining the worst, either. Crowley was fine. In a few days, Crowley would come slamming through the door of the bookshop, complaining about the trip and the rain and the uppity philodendron he now had to deal with since Aziraphale had spoiled it rotten. And it would hurt, having Crowley back and not being able to welcome him home with a kiss, but it would be fine. Crowley was fine. Everything was fine.

The English Ivy he’d been watering wrapped around his wrist to move the mister away. It was rather drenched.

Apologizing profusely, Aziraphale refilled the plastic mister with a snap and moved to the next plant, vowing not to let himself get distracted again. But as he was admiring the pothos on the next shelf, the phone in Crowley’s office rang.

“Probably telemarketers _ , _ ” he decided, choosing to ignore it. Crowley somehow managed to be on every calling list for every scam, poll, and multi-level marketing scheme in the country. Punishment, probably, for inventing them. “Best left unanswered.”

But then, when the phone stopped ringing, there was a sharp thunk as the ansaphone clicked on. Aziraphale had never gotten a spam call in his life, but he was fairly certain they didn’t usually bother to leave messages.

Crowley’s voice rang through the flat as the answering machine got to work. “Hey, it’s Anthony Crowley. You know what to do, do it with style.” Aziraphale rolled his eyes fondly, but wandered to the doorway to hear the message better.

“Hey, Crowley.” Oh! Anathema! Aziraphale turned back to the plant room, not wanting to invade on a personal conversation between friends, but stopped suddenly when he remembered Crowley had a mobile. Crowley  _ preferred _ his mobile. There was no reason for Anathema to be calling him at home, especially when she knew he was out of town, unless she couldn’t reach him otherwise. Aziraphale went back into the office. “This is your official warning that I am going to kill you when you get back,” Anathema continued cheerfully, making Aziraphale squint. “I know you’re back at your hotel by now, and you’re still not answering my calls. We do check-ins for a reason, dumbass. I know you can sober yourself up magically but you’re an idiot and you forget and get yourself into trouble, and this time that trouble is  _ me. _ I don’t care what happened or how drunk you were, as soon as you get home I’m going to kill you for scaring me. Dumbass.”

The ansaphone clicked. Aziraphale was left staring at it, watching the unopened message light blink on and trying to keep himself from full on panic.

Crowley wasn’t answering his phone.  _ Anathema _ was worried. Anathema, who was unperturbed by demons and unconcerned about angelic wrath, was worried about Crowley. To Aziraphale, that spelled out, unequivocally, that something was wrong.

He ran to the desk. If Crowley wasn’t answering Anathema, he probably wasn’t answering anyone, but he had to try. Snapping his address book into his hand, Aziraphale hurriedly punched in the number for Crowley’s mobile on his desk phone.

No one picked up.

“Right,” Aziraphale said. His hands were shaking as he put the phone back in its cradle. “That’s that, then. Only one thing left to do,” he decided. If Crowley wasn’t—he refused to think the word  _ couldn’t— _ answer his phone, Aziraphale would just have to go check on him himself.

Suddenly, he felt much less shaky. He had a plan, now. A course of action. Aziraphale was a worrier at heart, but that didn’t mean he liked it. He was built to be a fighter. He felt most himself when he had something to stand up against, not something to just fret about. It was part of the reason he’d staged Crowley as his adversary for so long; it was much easier to play the part of the defending angel to Crowley’s wiley demon than a member of a rationally questionable Arrangement. But that was done with now. Now, he was going to be the defending angel  _ for _ Crowley, instead of against him.

Aziraphale took a deep breath, and picked up the phone again. He’d only done this once before, by accident when the telephone had first come out and he’d gotten too excited talking to Crowley all the way across the city. He dialed Crowley’s mobile again. Then he set the phone on the desk, steeled himself, and jumped head first into the phone line.


End file.
